


Doctor Qyburn

by theelusiveflamingo



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 16:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theelusiveflamingo/pseuds/theelusiveflamingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cersei's peculiar therapist provides some rather unorthodox but extremely useful advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doctor Qyburn

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the same modern AU verse as "I will not mourn my losses." As it discusses Cersei's marriage to Robert, there is some mention of abuse. Nothing too extensive or graphic, but it is there.

Cersei knew him as Qyburn, just Qyburn.  Both the first name and the credentials on the brass plaque outside his office looked as if they’d been melted away.  Very violently, possibly by a blowtorch.   He claimed to be a psychiatrist, but there was no way in hell Cersei would take anything prescribed by a doctor Jaime claimed to have heard about from Roose Bolton (who, at Father’s last corporate event, had stared her down for a revolting eternity before saying _You’re beautiful, sweetheart, but I like girls with a little more meat on their bones._ She’d thrown her vodka tonic in his face; he had just laughed softly.  All that Grey Goose wasted, and for nothing.)

The office was made up of a tiny waiting room with three government-issue metal folding chairs and three never-changing copies of _Home and Garden_ on a table, and a slightly larger interior whose only interesting features were a threadbare orange couch, an extra door (to a closet?  To an apartment?  _Does he live in this shithole?  That’s pathetic)_ that had four locks, and the sallow, wrinkled frame of Qyburn himself.

The place always smelled of disinfectant.  Cersei sprayed extra perfume on her wrists before her appointments but this never stopped that cloying chemical scent from giving her a splitting headache for the rest of the night.  It made her think of terrible hidden secrets.  _I should feel at home here._

“Can’t you go to a _regular_ shrink?” Taena often wailed in that dramatic way she had.  “Maybe one with a few diplomas on his walls?  I’m sure one of Orton’s colleagues can recommend a good one.  All these rich guys are fifty shades of crazy.  At _least_ fifty.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Cersei would have to explain.  It was a shame that Taena had chosen _pretending to be stupid_ as her favorite form of flattering Cersei.  “Listen, Father always tells me that HIPAA is bullshit.  He says these shrinks foam at the mouth waiting to gossip about their rich clients.”  _At least this freak is nice enough to pretend he doesn’t know who I am._

Qyburn never acted like the names Lannister or Baratheon meant anything to him, and for this Cersei felt a rare sense of gratitude.

Tonight her lip was swollen from this morning, when Robert had decided to hit her across the mouth instead of just texting one of his whores or whatever the fuck it was he normally chose to do with his time.  (He’d had some reason or another, he always did, but it was all noise to Cersei, all just blubbering and bitching in her ear as she stood there and pictured cutting off his useless dick and stuffing it in his mouth.  _Even that probably wouldn’t shut him up.)_

She’d taken off her careful makeup in the car, because sometimes it seemed Qyburn was the only one who even cared what happened to her.  (Other than Jaime, of course, but he didn’t count because of course he cared, he _was_ her, and whatever happened to her might as well have happened to him, too.)  Qyburn’s eyes were all over the swelling, all over her face and her unstyled hair which was hanging loose around the middle of her back, and the both of them were too quiet.  Cersei didn’t like the spaces in between their sentences. They gave her too much time to think.  Plus, she jumped every time a trash can clattered outside.  _Get a grip, Cersei,_ she told herself.  _You’re a Lannister lioness.  Fucking act like one._

“I’ve been thinking back to our last session,” Qyburn said, finally.  “You mentioned that you believe every bit of your anger is justifiable.” 

“How do you remember what I said?”  Cersei asked.  “You never take notes.”  She was glad he didn’t. 

There was another pause as Qyburn looked her up and down, up and down.  If it seemed like he was undressing her in his mind, Cersei would at least understand.  But she couldn’t tell what this old man thought of her.

“Do you ever think that murder can be justified?” Qyburn asked softly, his fingers entwined calmly on his knee.  Cersei envied this.  In Qyburn’s office her hands shook when she wrote out his weekly checks from Jaime’s checking account, and her fingers danced in her lap while she sat there on his couch trying to pretend she was made of rock.

“Not often, no.”

“Come now, Cersei,”said Qyburn, and his sunken eyes showed more than just a flicker of life for once.  “To be frank, I don’t believe you.”

Cersei stared at him.  She could think of a million different things to say, but her mouth just gaped stupidly, the way Robert’s whores’ mouths did when they were pretending to find deep aesthetic merit in his sagging beer gut.

“Well, sometimes, yes,” Cersei relented.  “But who doesn’t?  We have the death penalty--isn’t that just justified murder?  Legal murder?”

Qyburn’s mouth twitched.  “Ah, but you…”

“But I _what?_ ”

Qyburn waited just a bit too long before he spoke again.

“I imagine that something that would sever the ties between Lannister Incorporated and the Baratheon Group would be very devastating to the family.  Such as…divorce, for example.  Hmmm?”

“I’ve been told.”  _He’s not supposed to know who I am. Where the hell is this conversation even going?_ Cersei wondered if she should leave, but Lannisters didn’t _run_.  They didn’t _escape_.

“Theoretically speaking, there are less acrimonious ways to sever certain alliances,” Qyburn said, now staring at his door with the four locks.  “I have found in my years working with the mind and body that we humans find tragedy far more comfortable than acrimony.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

Cersei was quiet.

“Tragedy.  Accidents.  They’re very sad, hmmmm?  If something were to _happen_ to Robert—purely hypothetically—”

And she broke out into a smile.  Her face _hurt_.  “So _this_ is what I’m paying you for,” she said.  Her hands were suddenly still in her lap.  “And just when I was beginning to think you were useless.”

Qyburn’s mouth twitched up just the tiniest bit.

 _I only truly smile when I’m alone with Jaime_ , Cersei thought, and she suddenly imagined herself waking up every day with a grin on her face.

That day would come.  That day _would_ come.


End file.
